Read Online Queen Victoria's Revenge by Harry Harrison - Free Book Online Page B

stopping by the Yard tonight to look at our identification files. Mug books I believe you call them. I won’t be there but you’ll be expected. Be of great help to us. Your skyjacker Angus turns out to be Angus Macpherson, one of the moving figures in the Free Scotland movement. We have been looking for him on a number of other charges, to which we have now added murder. He was a judo chap in the forces, that broken neck looks very much like his work. If you got through the pictures perhaps you can pick out some of his mates.”
    Tony belched lightly and sighed. “I’ll be happy to go, Inspector.”
    â€œFive-minute walk. Just head down Regent Street right off the Circus here, down the steps and the Yard is just across from the New Admiralty Building there, the great ugly thing with all the masts on the top that looks like a beached battleship. We’ve identified the dead man too, Ramon Garcia, Cuban in exile, troublemaker. Been in and out of your American jails for possession of weapons, things like that. The other two you captured are part of his group. Any questions?” The inspector tweaked lightly at one of the hairs sprouting from his ears.
    â€œHave you heard anything about my passport?”
    â€œYour embassy is sending a chap around here at ten tomorrow morning. He can take care of any other problems you might have.”
    Inspector Smivey let himself out and Tony locked the door carefully behind him. The gigli saw under his wrist itched and he scratched at it and thought of taking it off. But it wasn’t the sort of thing you liked to leave lying around, unless you were a brain surgeon that is, and in the end he left it in place. He was tired and really did not feel like going out, but he had promised the inspector. Maybe the fresh air would wake him up. He yawned widely as he was tying his tie before the bathroom mirror, and saw that he was developing nice black splotches under his eyes. The life of an international operator is never an easy one. But … Scotland Yard needed him, and an agent is never off duty. Squaring his shoulders, he left the room—after first making a careful survey of the corridor.
    Tourists of many nationalities crowded the lobby and he pushed through a babble of strange tongues and exotic dress to the street outside. It was dark now and Piccadilly Circus blazed with lights and boomed with traffic, spreading before his eyes the opening shot in almost every English motion picture ever made. A man with a cloth cap and the voice of a bullhorn was selling newspapers on the sidewalk and shouting something incomprehensible, but a large sheet posted next to him advertised “NEW SKYJACK REVELATIONS” in black letters. Tony wished he had some of the local coin to buy those revelations. Never mind, he could ask about them in the Yard. He strolled through the milling early evening crowds, admiring the signs and the shop windows, almost being killed when he stepped off the curb into whirring traffic and looked in the wrong direction.
    There was less traffic when he came to Pall Mall, the first street he had ever seen that was named after a cigarette, but he stopped nevertheless while he figured out which way to look. Right, that was it, not left, and he looked right and saw only a large black car slowly approaching.
    â€œDo you have a light for my cigarette?” a voice asked behind him and he was turning to say no before he realized that the voice had spoken in Spanish—not English. He turned faster and saw the familiar and unwelcome face of the skyjacker Jorge.
    â€œYou are under arrest,” he said firmly, and wondered how he would go about implementing that. Jorge grinned widely, then planted his shoulder against Tony’s chest and pushed.
    The black car had stopped behind them with the rear door open. Tony shot into it nicely and strong hands pinioned him. As he struggled Jorge fell in on top of him, the door slammed and they were